In the beginning…

My interest in researching our family history began with the stories I remembered my grandmother telling me about about my great-grandmother Ellen Wilson Hemingway, who was known as Ellen, daughter of John Wilson, but actually began life as Ellen Fozzard. My grandmother had told me: “She was a mannequin – disowned by her family of wealthy mill owners – her mother had a servant and she was driven about in a carriage”.

What I found, in fact, was that Ellen was a dressmaker before her marriage and therefore probably also could be described as a mannequin, as dressmakers would model their samples in those days. Also, she was illegitimate, known by her step-father’s name of Wilson, but she legally still had the surname “Fozzard”, as shown on her marriage certificate…maybe her illegitimacy is the origin of the theory that she was disowned, or that her mother was.

I also have some vague recollection of being told that Ellen’s family was associated with the fishing industry at Fleetwood. My cousin remembered that too. The Fozzards certainly had no obvious connection with the west coast, having come from a family background of stonemasons in West Ardsley, near Wakefield, but Ellen’s husband was named John Wilson. Wilson is a known name in the historic fishing industry on the Fylde coast, so perhaps there is a connection there to be explored.

Possible connections with the mill-owning Fozzards of Dewsbury and Batley, which I initially pursued, were not found and may have been assumed, as the name “Fozzard” is not a common one. However, Ellen’s husband was a textile engineer and the family did keep a servant, whom I found enumerated on the Dewsbury census.

Like all family stories there were things that I found to be true and other things perhaps exaggerated or attributed to the wrong person. I spent a long time researching the Fozzard and Hemingway families and, by this time, my appetite had been whetted and I became well and truly hooked. It was the beginning of an amazing journey into the past and I am still travelling.

Inset is a photograph of my grandmother Lilian, taken in 1916 with the children of her first marriage to Harry MacDonald – Hector (standing) and Eric (seated), who were my mother’s half-brothers.

I have a great affinity with Lilian; like me, she was widowed early and re-married. Her first husband, Harry, a sailor, died on board ship from pneumonia and my grandmother believed that he was buried at sea. I recently discovered that he died in December 1918, on board aboard HMS Europa in the Dardanelles, “from illness” and he was buried on land in a British cemetery at East Mudros, Lemnos, in the Aegean Sea. When my Gran received news of his death and burial in the “Aegean Sea”, she mistakenly assumed he had no physical grave, but that his body had been placed in the water. How sad that she never knew the whole truth. Eleven seamen died between 14 Nov and 23 Dec 1918 from “illness” aboard HMS Europa. At the top of the page recording the deaths is stated:

THE SPANISH INFLUENZA: The pandemic lasted from approximately July 1918 to April 1919 with a major peak in the UK between September 1918 and January 1919. It can be assumed that the vast majority of illness deaths (aboard naval ships) in these periods were due to the Spanish flu.

Aboard the Europa, there were over 50 on the sick list during July 1918-April 1919, probably all suffering from the Spanish flu. HMS Europa was the flagship at Mudros July 1915 – 1919 and was decommissioned at Malta in March 1920. Purchased by G F Bletto on 15 September 1920 for conversion to an emigrant carrier, the vessel sank in a gale off Corsica in January 1921.

Similarly, my first husband died from hemorrhagic pneumonia in 1985, probably the result of a virus. Both Lilian and I were left with two young children to rear. Both re-married. Like me, she mostly wore purple and also in common was our love of amethysts.

I’ve spent thousands of hours, since 2005, on researching my family. People often ask “how do you know it’s true?” and “where did you find it all?” Well, the simple answer is that I don’t know it all to be true…some links are accepted on the evidence available from rigorous one-name studies and original parish records (much easier when the names are uncommon)…and many more are shown to be true through the documentation I have unearthed from marriage certificates, wills and other documentation. In many cases, the “truth” is based on a combination of evidence from parish records, census, birth, marriage and death certificates, property deals and wills. Together, they allowed me to piece together the families and build up a picture of my ancestors and their lives.

However, mistakes can be made. The details that are printed in this web site do not contain my research notes, of which I have over 1000 pages. Where links are uncertain that is noted down in my research notes, but of course, in this web site such “unproven” are not identified…so if you find a link that you think is your family, please check it for yourself. When I discover that a link is definitely not viable, I edit the website accordingly, so some minor changes have been made over the last couple of years. I try to keep the website up to date but I consider the project always to be a “work in progress”.

At some stage I must publish my findings in a family book for my children, grandchildren and beyond, but I am still agonising about the format and content of that and how to make it “palatable”. In the meantime, I intend to publish here a collection of some of our family stories, which you can find in the menu.